Moonlightin' on the (Talenta) Plains
DM * DM Kuul Players * Quarion Silverfrond, elf wizard * Amranth d'Cannith, human artificer * Powers Cranstone (and Zord), halfling ranger * Reva Arya Cannith, human wizard * Torgrim Fireforge, dwarf cleric Notable NPCs * Ellywick, gnomish archivist for House Ghallanda * Nyssa, halfling guide in the employ of Ghallanda with her threehorn Athena * Bennar, an excoriated Jorasco dragonmarked heir * Alys, Boroman ir'Dayne's niece * High Templar Kasumi Dato, historian and expert on the Lycanthropic Purge Introduction You arrive as instructed to the Sharn lightning rail station, and quickly handed tickets to the Gatherhold, by way of Korth. The next few days are a relaxing ride as you go through the pastoral fields of northern eastern Breland, then transfer north to Flamekeep, where you find a Lyrandar ferry to take you across Scions Sounds to Korth, where you find that Boroman ir’Dayne himself has deigned to bring up a Wayfinders car for the train, ensuring you a comfortable day and a half trip into Gatherhold. Inside the car, you find that it’s luxuriously outfitted, and there’s even a corner dedicated to a straw nest, where a clawfoot resides. They also see a halfling dressed in traditional Talentan gear, puffing a pipe as he faces away from you. He turns to you, and you can see a weathered face break into a grin at the sight of you. “Ah, Wayfinders, welcome! I’m Owyn, and Boroman has asked me to be your guide on this part of your journey. Come, sit around this fabulous table and I’ll tell you what’s going on.” He brings you all to sit around the polished oaken table on one end of the car, and you all sit on the pillows provided around the low table. “So I don’t know how much you were told before, so I’ll give you the full rundown. It all started about a month ago. A small tribe, the Brightscale tribe, was completely wiped out. We found them a few days south of Gatherhold, animals and people slain to the last man. A few weeks later, we found the Bone River and Fastieth’s Stride tribes similarly gone. The daughter of the Bone River chieftain, Alys, was and still is missing. It looks almost like a pack of wild animals killed them, but the camps were far too organized, and the bodies all localized. None of the slain animal or halfling bodies had been taken, aside from a few members of the tribes who were just plain missing.” “Now, here’s the reason that we’re involved. See, it’s the niece of Boroman. She was, and hopefully still is, a member of the Bone River tribe. He’s worried; and since the Lathon can’t help, his tribe being on the other side of the Plains, he decided to call in you guys. He also requested Powers here” he tips his pipe at Powers “specifically on account of him being from the Plains – he’ll be your guide after you leave Gatherhold. Now, I know of Powers here, but why don’t you introduce yourselves to me?” The sparkle in his eye is haunted by the horror of what he was talking about, but you can sense that he’s usually a pretty convivial guy. He seems open and honest, and is more than willing to answer any of your questions, to the best of his ability. Expedition Summary The Wayfinders meet in one of the Foundation's private cars. There, they are greeted by Owyn, an old friend of Boroman's and a man familiar with the Talenta Plains. He tells them about the mysterious attacks perpetrated by what appears to be carvers, how the tracks seem to vanish completely after a certain point. The obvious culprit, of course, is magic, but Reva, their resident wizard cannot specifically identify which spell it could be based off of that description. the team, but Powers especially, worries for the girl Alys, who is the niece of Boroman ir'Dayne as is missing. She's not the only one missing either - there's a few other warriors missing from the other attacked tribes as well. The team intercepts a young girl fleeing through their cart, and the pair of Orien officials behind her. They claim that she's a changeling thief, and that they've finally caught up to her. Quarion manages to spot them slipping evidence into her pockets, and confronts them. They brush him off, and he swears that he'll see justice done. They head off to the local Golden Dragon Inn, a Ghallandan staple. They meet briefly in the bar to see if they can glean any useful information from the room. They manage to overhear a pair of soarwing pilots talking about a probable new attack a few days ago that they saw from the air. The next day Quarion inquires at the front desk about who would have records about people passing through the city, and the woman at the front desk directed them to to Ghallandan Enclave in the city. They meet with the Elders, who inform them of a Lammanian manifest zone that most halflings consider cursed, so is a likely spot to hide. They've also enlisted the services of the Hammertail tribe, along with one of their own native guides, a halfling woman named Nyssa and her threehorn companion Athena. She's to act as translator for the group, as many of the Hammertail tribe never bothered to learn Common. The Wayfinders and the tribe begin moving towards the lastest of the supposed animal attacks, the one that the soarwing riders saw, which happens to be not too far off of the route that thy'd need to take to get to the Lammanian manifest zone. The elders told them a story about a tribe of halflings who wandered into the forest and never returned. They're known now only as The Lost. They come across the tribe that the pilots had seen and discover that they are all dead. They were all killed by carvers, but Powers notices that none of the halfling bodies were bit, while the threehorns that made up the saurian population were. There's also drag marks in the direction of the manifest zone, indicating that a few bodies were dragged away. They begin to suspect an intelligence behind the attacks, likely some form of shapeshifters like druids. Reva suspects lycanthropes, and when one of the elders confirms that the term 'skindancer' is an old word for shapechanger, her mind is set. They separate form the tribe here, along with Nyssa, to seek out the manifest zone as the Hammertails stay behind to bury the dead. Three days later, they make it to the hill looking over the manifest zone. They make camp, but they are attacked during the night by what turns out to be a half dozen were-carvers and a druid. The lycanthropes are driven off, but not without cost. The next evening, on their way back to Gatherhold to consult with House Ghallanda records, Torgrim, Powers and Amranth fall victim to the lycanthropic curse and have wild dreams of hunting alongside their fellow transformed Wayfinders, though thankfully they do not attack the sleepers. The next day, as they travel, Amranth manages to collect enough wolfsbane to make antidotes to the curse that sleeps in their veins, and they seems cured of it when they do not wake in the night again before they hit Gatherhold. By the time they return to Gatherhold, more than a week after they had left, they find the city packed with frightened tribes. They return to the Ghallandan elders, who they tell everything that they know. The elders plead with them to help them stem the tide of this rash of lycanthropes, and the Wayfinders agree after they elders inform them that they will help arm them to the best of Gatherhold's ability. The Sandpounder tribe is a tribe that's long been famed for making superior weaponry, and it turns out that Power's uncle had commissioned a weapon years ago that he'd never picked up. Powers reveals that he was no longer among the living, and so the smith bequeaths the princely weapon to Powers - a mithril tangat. They head back to the Enclave to check the records and they meet Ellywick, the gnomish keeper of records for the past several years. They all huddle together to do research, and their hard work bears fruit. The Sailback clan disappeared into the manifest zone almost 200 years ago after their totem animal died off due to disease. Around 5 years later, two whole tribes were wiped out in a series of vicious dinosaur attacks within close distance of the manifest zone. The Sailback tribe was also known for their aggressive war paint, the descriptions of which matched the markings on the slain lycanthropes from the night ambush. They decide to call it a night and meet back with the elders in the morning. They come back in the morning, and the elders do not have much more information to give them, besides confirming that one of the bodies that they brought back fform the night ambush belonged to a clan that had been wiped out, and he was wearing Sailback war colors. Torgrim calls the Ghallandan elders out as cowards, using mercenaries to do their dirty work for them. Powers cannot stand for this and marches out with Zord, disgusted with their dwarven teammate. Quarion and Reva try and salvage the situation, but the damage has been done. As a personal favor to Lord ir'Dayne, they will not be banning Wayfinders from Ghallandan properties. Instead, only Torgrim is blacklisted by the House of Hospitality. After he storms out, the Ghallandan elders tell the team of the preparations that they had made overnight: collecting more wolfsbane for them, finding silvered arrows and securing the reinforcements to secure the area after the Wayfinder's tactical strike. Before leaving town, Reva meets with the local Cannith forgehold, the forgemaster of whom is Vivien, an older woman bearing the Mark along her left arm, and befriends her. Vivien tells her to come back after she's finished the job - that she's got something special for her and the others. Reva rejoins the others to find that Nyssa will not longer be helping them, but she's acquired the things that the Elders promised for them. She bids them farewell as they leave Gatherhold. They make their way back to the manifest zone easily, with no sign of any more lycanthropes. They enter the forest, carefully, until they stumble onto a man with a hald dozen sleeping carvers. They charge into the glade, spells and weapons roaring, and slaughter half of them before they realize that these are actually carvers, and they've just assaulted an innocent man's animals. He eventually introduces himself as Bennar, though Reva and Powers soon figure out that he's an excoriated member of House Jorasco when he heals his carvers, Quarion and Reva. He grudgingly gives them some more information on the remains of the Sailback tribe - that their leader is named Morrin and his lieutenant wears some sort of wolf skull for a mask. Torgrim was very suspicious of the halfling, which lead to some party conflict, but Quarion and Reva managed to smooth things over enough for him to give them a rough description of what Morrin looked like. They decide to stop for the night in Bennar's glade. When they wake up in the morning, they see a large black raven in the camp. The raven tells them that if they leave, they will not be killed. The Wayfinders kill the bird, who turns out to have been controlled by a spellcaster, before an attack is heading towards them. The bone-faced lieutenant, the druid from earlier and 4 more werecarvers, in full hybrid form, come out of the woodwork. They manage to kill all of the werecarvers and capture the druid, but the lieutenant escapes and flees to go fetch her master. The Wayfinders lead a full retreat from the forest, with the remaining forces pursuing them. They make it out of the forest a few minutes before the others, so Amranth takes the time to build a basic earthworks for defense. Powers is worried that they won't be able to hurt them from this far out, so Reva grabs Quarion's bow and, in a flurry of innovation, manifests a dragonmark as she changes Quarion's longbow into a short, recurve bow for Powers.Two werecarvers approach them at first, one from each the north and south, but they are handily dispatched. Reva starts a forest fire in the hopes of slowing down the final three, but the emerge from the fire, scorched and angry. The small, scarred Morrin, his mysterious lieutenant... and the child Alys seated on a earthen hammertail, amulet on her chest glowing a bright crimson, matching her eyes and Morrin's. Morrin and his lieutantant both charge at the Wayfinders amidst a barrage of fire and silvered arrows, Halfway to the Wayfinders, Morrin's body swells as he transforms into his beast form. However, he doesn't stop growing when he's carver sized. He continues growing until he's a full 25 foot tall sailback. With a thunderous roar, he charges the group as his lieutenant blinks through space to find herself on the far side of the heroes. Reva concentrates on lifting the amulet from Alys's chest, but something malign seeps into her when she does so. Morrin is visibly weakened once the amulet is removed from Alys, but his lieutenant blows a cone of freezing winter over the group, dropping Reva. At this point, the amulet has weakened Morring to the point where he drops, strength failing, and the lieutenant, sensing weakness, flees. The party, too severely injured from the battle, let her flee as they go to Alys and recover the amulet. Powers grabbed it with his mess kit and tosses it into the bag of holding. They bring Alys back to Gatherhold, but they are worried - she hadn't woken up at all on the three day journey back to the city. Nyssa's brother meets them at the gate and sneaks Torgrim to the Orien station, as Torgrim is technically not allowed in the city. The resat of them go to see the Ghallandan elders, only to discover that there are templars of the Silver Flame already here. Inside, they discover High Templar Kasumi Dato, a well renowned scholar of the Purge, and one of Reva's personal heroines. Reva tries to give a positive account of their final trip into the manifest zone, but Dato's piercing glare makes her confess to everything else that happened, making her feel shamed in front of her. The group accompanies the High Templar to the local shrine of the Silver Flame, where Dato removes the amulet form the bag of holding and seals it inside a small silver box given to her by the Keeper of the Flame herself. She tries to heal Alys, but cannot life the affliction. She claims that she needs to be brought to Flamekeep proper, so that the Keeper can heal her. Epilogue Epilogue 1 “Order, Order!” The diminutive gnomish judge declares as he slams his gavel down, quieting the court. “We are here in the case of Bim versus Rita d’Orien and Borac Deneith. How does the defense plead?” A smartly dressed gnome, mark of scribing clearly visible on his forearm from his rolled-up sleeves, walks up to the bench, wide smirk on his face. “Thilian Davandi d’Sivis, at your service. I’ve been acquired through the services of Masters Silverfrond and Cannith to represent Bim here. I’ve got a few signed affidavits here saying something about planted evidence, oh my. Now for my opening statement….” Rita and Borac’s glares towards the fancy barrister deepen when he identifies the changelings benefactors. Epilogue 2 A moderately attractive halfling woman watches as the Wayfinders board the train in Gatherhold and the train slowly pulls out. She turns away, easily slipping back into the crowd of similar looking halflings and vanishing as her eyes flash red for a brief second. The shadow cast behind her does not resemble a halfling, however – it is an undefinable shape that holds a certain malign quality to it. Epilogue 3 Four days after Powers drops Alys off in Flamekeep. Alys’s eyes shoot open and she jerks up in a panic. Her eyes fly side to side for a moment, before realising that no one is there. She brings her legs to her chest and begins sobbing. A moment later, a elderly woman in silver robes comes into the room yelling for someone as she cautiously approaches. She lays a gentle hand on Alys, who immediately cuts off crying, body stiffening in fear. “Hush, small one, you are safe. I am Sister Margaery, and you are in Flamekeep itself. No demon could find you here with a map and a sample of your blood. You are safe.” Alys remains stiff as a board, before slowly uncovering her face, looking at the kindly smile on the elder sister’s face. With a cry, she launches herself into her arms, sobbing uncontrollably. Sister Margaery does her best to comfort her as another small, dark skinned child slips into the room, a massive shadow prowling behind her. “It’s okay, Margaery. Auntie Tira says that Alys is going to be alright.”Category:Expedition